CD Projekt defend legal move against pirates

CD Projekt RED have not denied reports that they have issued legal letters demanding €1,000 (approximately $1,200) to German gamers suspected of having a pirated copy of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

In an interview with Eurogamer, a spokesman for the company said, “As you know, we aren’t huge fans of any sort of DRM here at CD Projekt RED. DRM itself is a pain for legal gamers. We don’t want to make their lives more difficult by introducing annoying copy protection systems.

“Moreover, we always try to offer high value with our product – for example, enhancing the game with additional collectors’ items such as soundtracks, making-of DVDs, books, walkthroughs, etc.

“However, that shouldn’t be confused with us giving a green light to piracy. We will never approve of it, since it doesn’t only affect us but has a negative impact on the whole game industry.”

Back in November, the developer cautioned gamers that letters would be sent to those who pirated the The Witcher 2.

CD Project added, “We’ve seen some of the concern online about our efforts to thwart piracy, and we can assure you that we only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally.”

However, some people who have received a letter said they had never heard of the game even though their IP was associated with an illegal download.

The Witcher 2 has achieved critical and financial success by selling 1m copies. However, it was estimated that the game was illegally downloaded at least 4.5m times.

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Proxies/VPNs/unsecured wireless connections. Sure, they can track down some with illegal copies but many times if anyone really knows what they’re doing, in order to never get caught pirating they will never be found.